The present application relates to a fluorescence image producing method, a fluorescence image producing apparatus, and a fluorescence image producing program that are suitable for a field of observing a tissue section, for example.
In general, a biological sample is fixed to a supporting base such as a glass slide and stained in a predetermined manner before being used in the field of pathology.
In a pathological diagnosis, the presence of a malignant tumor is primarily determined in a morphological view using a sample made by performing a Hematoxylin-Eosin (HE) staining on the tissue section or performing a Papanicolaou staining on the secretion cell. If a malignant tumor or a suspected site with the malignant tumor is found, the presence, the type, and the stage of the malignant tumor are secondarily determined in a molecular biological view using a sample made by performing a fluorescence staining on the tissue section or the secretion cell.
After a long storage period of such a sample, degradation of quality and discoloration of the biological sample occur and microscopic visibility of the biological sample also lowers, in general. Because the sample is sometimes diagnosed in a laboratory other than a facility where the sample is made such as a hospital, the biological sample is generally sent by mail, which takes a certain time.
In view of such situations, there is proposed an apparatus for storing the biological sample in the form of an image data (see, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application No. 2003-222801).
By the way, in a case of obtaining an image of the entire biological sample enlarged to a predetermined scale, it is difficult to form the entire image on an imaging surface, and therefore a technique is generally used in which the biological sample is sectioned and enlargements of sectioned parts are connected together. Because this technique includes a step of moving a stage to focus on the sample with respect to each part of the sample, it takes a longer time to connect the enlargements of the parts.